Southern Africa
IST Energy has had its national contracts for the supply of remote terminal units (RTUs) and pole-mounted remote terminal units (PMRTUs) extended by Eskom Distribution. The company has also announced that its national contract for transformer protection has also been renewed by Eskom Transmission, while it has won new national contracts for the supply of RTUs for transmission substation control system applications and for distribution bus coupler protection and feeder protection systems.
Circuit Breaker Industries (CBI) has entered into a sponsorship agreement with the University of the Witwatersrand spanning a five-year period, sponsoring a Chair in the School of Electrical and Information Engineering called 'The CBI Chair of Lightning'. The sponsorship is worth approximately R2m. (See 'Fighting the brain drain')
Nokia cellphone importer, RF Group, has outsourced the repair of Nokia handsets to Exactmobile. The RF Group has held the Nokia franchise since 1991 and estimates that there are some seven million units in use in southern Africa. It says that this figure has given just the right critical mass to the establishment of a central, specialist repair facility such as the one built by Exactmobile. Exactmobile spent R75m building a major new repair hub in Johannesburg, modelled on a similar installation in France, set up there to service Nokia's needs in Europe. The Exactmobile Repair Hub, is already repairing thousands of phones per day, but has the capacity to double its current output. The centre is a sealed, static-free environment with clean-air areas and with strict access control.
Dimension Data recently implemented an IT infrastructure for CHN Campus, Port Alfred, South Africa's newest specialist higher education institution, in a deal worth R1,8m. In addition, the technology services company won the contract to manage the entire site remotely. CHN Campus Port Alfred, located in the former Kowie Grand Hotel, is allied to the CHN University of Professional Education in The Netherlands. It will offer a four year degree in hospitality management. The site had absolutely no IT infrastructure, and CHN placed the order for a complete solution with Dimension Data.
IST Telecom has received the annual award for the supplier with the best performance in the quality category. Considering that Telkom has more than 10 000 suppliers, IST said that this is a very considerable achievement. For the second year running, IST Telecom also received an overall silver rating from Telkom.
NamITech will be opening a new office in Tanzania. The company said it has teamed up with a Tanzanian consortium called Strategic Works and will be officially opening an office in Dar es Salaam in August. Strategic Works will be headed up by Ami Mpungwe.
Overseas
Business
Intel has announced second-quarter revenue of $6,3 bn, down 7% sequentially and approximately flat year-over-year. Second-quarter net income was $446m, down 52% sequentially and up 128% year-over-year. The results include a $106m charge related to winding down Intel Online Services, along with a $112m write-off of acquired intangibles, primarily related to Xircom PC cards for wireline networking.
Microchip Technology reported strong results for the first fiscal quarter ended June 30, 2002. Net sales for the quarter were $159,7m, up over 7% from the March 2002 quarter, and up about 15% from the prior year's first quarter. Steve Sanghi, Microchip President and CEO: "All product areas posted strong sequential revenue gains in the quarter, with our microcontroller product line growing 6%, our analog product line growing 16% and our Serial EEPROM product line growing 8%. The sequential revenue growth in microcontrollers evidences the rapid design win acceptance we continue to experience in our customers' applications." During the quarter, Microchip also shipped a record 10 500 new development systems, surpassing its old shipment record by over 10%. Sanghi added that key factors in the growth of its analog products during the quarter were the expansion of its analog customer base, increased analog sales to its existing microcontroller customers, and reduced dependence on customers in the cellphone industry.
RF Micro Devices has reported that revenue for the fiscal 2003 first quarter was approximately $103,9m, a sequential increase of 3,5% compared to revenue of $100,4m for the previous quarter. Quarterly revenue increased approximately 48,4% vs revenue of $70,1m for the corresponding quarter of fiscal 2002. Revenue exceeded its prior estimate of $98m to $101m for the quarter, because components shipped to the handset market had exceeded customer forecasts, said RFMD. The chipmaker anticipates revenues for the next quarter will increase sequentially 5% to 10%. To improve profitability, it continues to implement cost reduction and yield improvement initiatives in its core handset market, including the development of next-generation, highly integrated power amplifiers, as well as invest aggressively in new markets, such as wireless LAN, Bluetooth, satellite radio, Global Positioning Systems (GPS) and wireless infrastructure.
Companies
Northrop Grumman, the Los Angeles-based global defence company, and TRW, an advanced aerospace and systems technology company, have jointly announced that they will merge. The combination will position Northrop Grumman as the nation's second largest defence contractor with projected annual revenues of more than $26 bn. Northrop Grumman will acquire TRW for approximately $7,8 bn, plus the assumption of TRW's net debt at the time of closing. After completion of the merger, it said it plans to separate TRW's automotive business, either through a sale or a spin-off of the business to shareholders. TRW's previous agreement to sell its Aeronautical Systems business to Goodrich for $1,5 bn will remain unaffected by the merger.
Marconi has agreed to the sale of its Applied Technologies division (MTech), to venture capital firm 3i and funds associated with 3i, for £57 million. The company will trade as E2V Technologies. The sale of Marconi Applied Technologies Limited and Marconi Applied Technologies Inc has been completed. The completion of the sale of assets of Marconi Applied Technologies' French business will occur subject to the receipt of French regulatory approval. Earlier this year Marconi sold its optoelectronic components development and manufacturing business to Bookham Technology.
Microchip Technology is acquiring a semiconductor manufacturing complex in Gresham, Oregon from Fujitsu Microelectronics, for $183,5m in cash. The Gresham facility (referred to as Fab 4) will substantially enhance Microchip's short-term and long-term global manufacturing capacity, it said.
Lattice Semiconductor has acquired Cerdelinx Technologies for $23m in stock.
Samsung Electronics has extended its strategic partnership with ARM in a new licensing agreement where Samsung will gain full access to all IP to be developed independently by ARM for future generation products. Samsung has previously licensed a number of key technologies from ARM, including a number of CPU cores and PrimeCell peripherals.
Taiwan's Via Technologies has set up a new subsidiary in the US called Via Telecom to develop chipsets for cellphones.
Industry
The worldwide semiconductor packaging and assembly market is showing signs of a recovery but will not return to positive revenue growth until 2003, according to market research firm Dataquest. The research predicts that the worldwide semiconductor packaging and assembly revenue will reach $4,191 bn in 2003, a 54% increase over the $2,715 bn figure it predicts for 2002. That 2002 figure would reflect a 9% decline from 2001.
The US National Electronics Manufacturing Initiative (NEMI), an industry-led consortium, has launched the Lead-Free Hybrid Assembly and Rework Project ( www.nemi.org). This project follows-on from NEMI's Lead-Free Assembly Project, a three-year effort that recommended an industry-standard lead-free alloy for solder paste reflow, and carried out extensive testing to determine reliability of the alloy compared to eutectic tin-lead solder. The goal of NEMI's new project is to develop robust lead-free assembly and rework processes for printed wiring board (PWB) assemblies using the NEMI-recommended lead-free solder - Sn3.9Ag0.6Cu. The project will be working with hybrid assemblies, representing high-end office computer products that use both SMT and pin-in-hole (PIH) components.
GSM calls will now be even more secure, thanks to a new security algorithm, known as A5/3. The algorithm has been developed by a joint working party between the GSM Association Security Group and the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), for use in GSM systems. It will also be useable for the General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) where it will be known as GEA3, and other GSM modes such as high speed circuit switched data (HSCSD) and enhanced data rates for GSM evolution (EDGE). GSM systems already use several security elements designed to safeguard the interests of the user, network operators and service providers. The A5/3 encryption algorithm specifically supplies signalling protection, so that sensitive information such as telephone numbers is protected over the radio path, and user data protection, to protect voice calls and other user generated data passing over the radio path.
Aprisa, a developer of concept-to-production software solutions for OEMs and EMS providers, has announced that its free online component database - Component Center - has signed its 500th registrant. Component Center ( www.aprisainc.com) is an unbiased XML database containing more than two million active and two million passive orderable part numbers from more than 900 manufacturers. It offers parametric and rule-based search technology designed for the specific search needs of engineers and buyers.
International Rectifier (IR) has announced that the Defense Supply Center Columbus (DSCC) has granted JANS certification for the International Rectifier Corporation Italiana SPA (IRCI) wafer fabrication facility located in Borgaro, Torino, Italy. JANS is the highest quality level assigned by MIL-PRF-19500, and is used by nearly every space-level customer.
According to US market research firm Strategy Analytics, Infineon Technologies was the number two supplier of automotive semiconductor products, in the year 2001, with a 7,9% share of the global market. Infineon's segment revenues of $860m led the company to a 16,6% increase in its market share from one year earlier, despite an overall market downturn of 2,1%, to $10,9 bn. Infineon was ranked as the number one supplier of automotive semiconductors in Europe, supplying around one sixth of all chips in the segment.
Gordon Moore, chairman emeritus of Intel, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Bush at a White House ceremony on 9 July. He was one of 12 distinguished Americans to receive the country's highest civilian honour. In 1990 Moore received the National Medal of Technology award from the White House.
Tektronix has appointed Neil Huddlestone to Vice President of the company's Europe/Middle East/Africa (EMEA) Sales and Operations. In his new role, Huddlestone assumes executive responsibility for the Tektronix EMEA operations, including overseeing European sales and service activities.
Technology
Lattice Semiconductor has introduced what it says is the industry's first 'in-system programmable and dynamically reconfigurable Instant-On FPGA family'. The ispXPGA (in-system programmable eXpanded Programmable Gate Array) family combines on-chip E2 memory with SRAM cells in a nonvolatile architecture which allows infinite reconfiguration. Lattice calls this unique marriage of technologies ispXPTM, for eXpanded Programmability. Since the ispXP devices self-configure in microseconds at power-up (Instant-On), they are available to an electronic system during its power-up sequence. The products are claimed to be highly secure too, since on-chip E2 memory means no external bit stream is exposed during configuration, and security bits can inhibit FPGA pattern readback.
Infineon Technologies has revealed its development roadmap for its next generation of microcontroller chips for engine and transmission control systems. The new AUDO-NG family of 32 bit microcontrollers, which act as the computing brains of intelligent control systems for diesel and petrol engines, will allow ten times more computing power compared to today's solutions, claims Infineon. The AUDO-NG family is based on Infineon's TriCore Unified Processor architecture, which combines the strengths of a microcontroller, a microprocessor and a digital signal processor in a single core.
CMOS Micro Device has entered the content addressable memory (CAM) market, announcing a ternary product for standalone and embedded applications. The CMD400 is an SRAM-based, 400 MHz ternary CAM core, claimed to have more than three times the performance of today's products with similar processing technology.
At the Networld+Interop exhibition in Tokyo, Infineon Technologies and Canopus, a provider of high-performance systems for video distribution, demonstrated multi-channel video over existing telephone wiring using Infineon's standard Packet over QAM-VDSL (PoVDSL) chipset and Canopus' 'MediaEdge' media server.
Teravicta Technologies, a start-up RF micro-electromechanical system (MEMS) solutions company, has brought out its first product, an ultra-low loss, 0-6 GHz RF MEMS single-pole, double-throw (SPDT) switch. RF switches are key components in nearly all radios and wireless products. Teravicta's TT612 switch combines ultra-low losses (0,14 dB at 2 GHz) with near-perfect linearity (IP3 >65 dBm) and high-power handling capability (3 W continuous RF), in a surface-mount package. It claims that the immediate benefits of RF MEMS switches are longer battery life and greater connection quality.
An Oxford company called Automatic Parallel Designs (AutoPD) has designed a fast, small and power-efficient multiplier using a different approach to two of the most fundamental aspects of electronic computation - hardware addition and multiplication. The researchers say they expect it to deliver a doubling of speed, combined with a reduction in power consumption of around 50% - with the possibility of trading these benefits for up to 40% less cell area. AutoPD, whose management team are top mathematicians, says that the architecture combines the speed of logarithmic designs with the superior layout characteristics of linear designs. Multiplication is a core computation in CPUs, DSPs, graphics processors and encryption devices. The technology is said to be highly modular and may be applied flexibly to gain advantage in market segments, from leading-edge processors to established volume ICs.
Appointed: Kevin Murphy and Jeva Narian as Field Application Engineers for the products of STC Frequency Technology, recently acquired by Arrow Altech Distribution.
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